Dental Work
by Kristina Andersson
Summary: Who invented dentistry? The Gods on Olympus are bored... Tiny mentions of Slash


  
Title: Dental Work 

Author: Kristina Andersson   
Shanna_se@yahoo.se 

http://kristinas_corner.tripod.com/ 

Rating: G 

Category: Humor, hopefully... 

Summary: Who invented dentistry? The Gods on Olympus are bored... 

Disclaimers: I do not own the Olympic pantheon. They own themselves. I do not own any characters that have ever appeared on the shows Xena: WP and Hercules: TLJ. I do not own any dentists. Nor do I want to. But I do own myself. ;) 

No dentist were hurt during the writing of this fic. Although, the author is still missing two teeth... 

Huge thanks to Carrie for beta. 

Scorpio gave me this plot bunny while answering some feedback I sent her. So give her the credit for the idea, and me the blame for the fic...   
  
  
  


**Dental Work**

_Olympus_ 

"I'm bored. Bored, bored, bored. I'm bored!" Strife singsonged and rocked his chair back and forward. 

Eris grinned and kicked one of the back legs on the chair. Naturally, Strife lost his balance. 

"Why'dja do that for?" he growled from the floor. 

She shrugged, "Not bored anymore, are ya?" 

Strife narrowed his eyes and started to create a fireball in his right hand. "No. Now I'm pissed off..." 

"Enough!" Zeus' shout echoed through the great hall, making all the gods and goddesses look up from their boredom. "I've had enough of this apathy most of you have going on these days. It has to stop!" 

"Easier said than done," Ares snorted. "After the Agreement started, we've had nothing to do. We're trapped here on Olympus with nothing to do. No wonder we're bored!" 

Athena sighed, "Yes, who would've thought we would miss the mortal realm so much?" 

Yes, things were different on Olympus now. Yet another war against a god from a different pantheon had almost destroyed the world. That had caused Odin, the ruler of the Asgardian pantheon to set up a huge meeting with all the pantheons, and lonely gods in the world. The godly fighting had to stop, or the next one could mean the end for all of them. 

Several sanctions were put in place. No longer could the gods intervene personally in the on goings on earth. Until it had been proven they could control themselves, and not use any powers while visiting the mortal realm through a long line of tests, only the head of the pantheon was allowed to go there. And those tests weren't scheduled for yet another century. 

Zeus scowled, "Not being able to go to the mortal realm isn't an excuse for just sitting on your bum all day! You're only bored if you *allow* yourself to be bored. Start doing stuff!" 

"Says the one god who is allowed to go to the mortal realm," Artemis sneered. 

Zeus rolled his eyes at her. "Listen, you can't intervene personally, but you can inspire from afar." He looked at all the blank faces that stared back at him. No one seemed to have a clue. Zeus sighed. "Look, I'll make it easy for you," he took a deep breath and with a voice that thundered all over Olympus, he said, "I, Zeus, king of Olympus here by declare that all gods, sorted into different groups by me, shall come up with ideas to inspire the mortals with. It can be a new tool of some kind, a new science, or just a really bad joke for all I care. What I do care about is this, one, the whole group has to be involved, and you all have to agree, and two, you'll send out this idea to no more than ten mortals, even less if you want. And then we can sit back and see which ideas caught on!" He looked expectantly at the other gods. 

Most of them nodded and even smiled. 

Ares shrugged and said, "Sure why not? It beats doing nothing." 

"I'm *so* glad you approve, Ares," Zeus said sarcastically. "Just for that, you'll be in Hercules' group." 

Both Hercules and Ares groaned. 

Zeus didn't notice and started to divide all the gods and goddesses in groups that only made sense to him. Some groups were large, others were small, some all gods, some all goddesses and some mixed. There didn't seemed to be any logic to it, but when Zeus was done, he took a last look and nodded approvingly. "There you go," he said. "You don't have to stay here in the great hall, but I *will* check up on you to make sure you do what you're told."   
  
As he left the Hall, most of the groups left too, but three groups remained. 

One of those were Strife's. He looked at the other group members. Eris, Phobos and Deimos shouldn't be a problem to work something out with. True, they usually spent any time together bickering or trying to stab the others in the back, but they did share the same interests. Like meaningless violence and general chaos. The problem was the two other members of the group. What in Tartarus could Zeus have been thinking when he put Apollo and his healer son together with the outcasts from the House of War? 

"Let's create a new kind of music," Apollo suggested. 

Eris snorted, "Tartarus, no! How about a new torturing device?" 

Deimos nodded eagerly, "Yeah, something real painful!" 

"And scary!" Phobos chipped in. 

Ace had paled, "I can't do something like that! I heal people, not hurt them!" 

Eris sighed and rolled her eyes, "You're such a wimp!" 

"Hey!" Apollo growled and narrowed his eyes. "Don't call my son a wimp!" 

Eris went up in his face, "Oh, you wanna make something of it?" 

The conversation went downhill from there. 

After a while, Strife got bored again and remembered what he had in his pocket. It wasn't much; just a little beetle made of glass, charmed into a listening device. With it, Strife could listen in on others' conversations, even from a distance, without anyone becoming suspicious. He grinned and silently activated the bug and homed in on the two other groups who were still in the Great Hall.   
  
Athena, Hephaestus and the muses seemed to work on a box that was supposed to be some sort of combined scrying mirror and library. Apparently, you were supposed to be able to store and view information in the box. And maybe even get your box to talk to other people's boxes, creating a web of information. Strife snorted, like that would ever catch on. He looked at the other end of the Great Hall. Ares and Hercules seemed to get along as well as they always did...   
  
"Advancing the Army!" Ares shouted and pushed Hercules into the wall. 

"Something to promote peace!" Hercules shouted back. 

"Something about war!" Ares growled. 

"No! Something about peace, or charity!" Hercules growled back. 

"War!" 

"Peace!" 

"War!" 

"Peace!" 

"How about a peace keeping army?" Joxer interrupted and took another bite of his apple. 

Both Ares and Hercules stopped and stared at Joxer. 

Noticing that they were staring at him, Joxer blushed, "You know, an army that only tries to keep the peace, an army that doesn't take sides, that remains neutral. That goes to war ridden places and tries to help the civil population, and when a peace treaty has been written, stays behind for a while to make sure that both sides follows it." He scratched his head. "But how would people know they weren't a regular army?" He snapped is fingers, "I know! They can wear blue helmets!" 

Ares and Hercules were still staring at him. Joxer blushed some more. "Or maybe it's a bad idea..." 

Ares smiled. "It's a brilliant idea, my love!" He said and kissed his husband. Joxer enthusiastically kissed him back. 

Hercules nodded, "It could work. It might take a while, though..." He was completely ignored as the war god and his consort continued to make out. "Yep, it might take a while..." The former hero sighed and sat down to wait until Ares and Joxer were done. They showed no signs of stopping anytime soon. "It might even take a millennia or two..." Hercules muttered for himself. 

Strife grinned and returned to his own groups' discussion.   
  
Eris was currently banging Apollo's head into a table. Deimos and Phobos were cheering her on, and poor Ace sat in a chair with his head in his hands whimpering silently.   
  
Deciding the group had squabbled enough, Strife suggested, "Why don't we do something involving healing? It's right up Apollo's and Ace's alley, and healing can be painful and scary..." 

Deimos and Phobos nodded eagerly, "Yeah, yeah! Scary and painful! Cool!" 

Eris made a face, but reluctantly let go of Apollo. "It might work..." 

Apollo rubbed his sore throat and nodded, "It might work to work together on that, but you all have to keep in mind that what ever we come up with will be practically useless if its too painful and scary. We have to find a balance." 

Ace nodded in agreement. 

Eris growled, "We can do subtle. We just don't like it much. It's usually boring..."   
  
"Do you guys have anything in the health department that we could help with?" Strife asked the sun god and his son before Eris could get ticked off again. 

Ace thought about it for a while and then said, "It has to be something where pain and fear can be used as a positive thing." 

"Or be used to make sure mortals don't use it unnecessarily," Apollo added. "You know, there's a lot of things mortals can do to *prevent* some diseases. But they don't. Usually because they don't believe in it or they just don't feel it's worth the bother. If we could make the cure for something, scary and painful, the mortals might start doing things to prevent it from happening in the first place." 

Ace suddenly grinned, "How about dentistry?" he asked his father. 

Apollo grinned back, "That might work." 

"Dental what?" Deimos asked and scratched his head, looking very confused. 

"Dental work, oral hygiene. Healing peoples teeth," Ace explained. 

"Yes," Apollo confirmed. "If mortals cleaned their teeth there would be fewer holes in them, but they just don't bother, and then have a healer pull the teeth out if it aches too much." 

Deimos frowned, "That's just stupid. If they pull out their teeth, how can they chew food?" 

"Most old people can't," Ace answered. 

"Bummer," Deimos said. 

Apollo nodded, "You're right, it is stupid, and that's why we haven't even tried to show mortals how to heal the teeth. Why do all that work when they can't even bother to clean their teeth two times a day?" 

"So, we need to make healing the teeth less scary than just pulling them out, but more scary than to just clean your own teeth." Strife concluded. 

"I can start by making pulling out teeth more painful." Deimos suggested. "And make teeth with holes in them ache even more than what they do now." 

Ace smiled, "That's a good start." 

"And I can make them fear the pain.." Phobos said. 

"I want to add metal tools, they are scary and can resemble torture devises," Eris said. "There's something special about metal and pain... It's just lovely..." 

Several other suggestions were thrown into the air and, probably, for the first time, did members from the House of War and from the House of Intelligence work together, and actually enjoyed themselves. 

Strife grinned, and decided he would 'help' by giving this project his personal touch.   
  


_Mortal Realm, The Kingdom of Sweden_   


Kristina moaned as she exited the building and gently rubbed her cheek. Going to the dentist was pure torture! Today more than ever. 

She turned around and glared at the building. Usually it made her smile. And it was kind of funny, having a dental clinic next door to a candy store. Kristina had heard that the dentists hadn't been very happy when the candy store moved in. If fact, in the window next to their neighbor, someone had put up a horrible blow up of an open mouth full with rotten teeth and cavities. 

The candy store's owner, Mr. Strife, (And wasn't that a strange name?) had countered by putting up a poster in his window that said 'Eat more candy, support your local dentist!'. 

To be completely honest, Kristina visited the candy store a lot more often then she visited the dental clinic. But just two weeks ago she'd had her annual check up, and had been told she had no cavities. Now, that was good, of course, but the dentist, Dr. Payne, had also taken some X-rays. And according to those, she had two milk teeth left, with no 'real' teeth underneath. 

Dr. Payne, a strange man with very blond hair and a lot of twitches and strange grins, seemed to have taken great pleasure in telling her, that those two milk teeth needed to be pulled out, so she could get braces to make the gap between the other teeth smaller. 

She'd had nightmares about it ever since he told her, and today, she'd realized the reality was even worse. 

To pull out the tooth, Dr, Payne had first drilled through the tooth, cracking it into smaller parts before pulling them out. And while she'd gotten a shot for the pain, with a very large needle, it still felt strange. And she'd seen it all through the reflection in Dr. Payne's glasses. For some reason, she couldn't take her eyes away from the sight. 

And now she walked here, hardly being able to move or feel anything in the left part of her face, with cotton in her mouth and strict orders not to eat for a couple of hours, not that she had any appetite, feeling very miserable. And the worst part, was knowing that she had to go back next month to get the other side fixed. 

Those who'd invented dentistry were sadists. 

  
THE END 


End file.
